


you're going to be a witness to change

by teavious



Category: An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 05:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5615227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teavious/pseuds/teavious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Helene deals with her best friend leaving her behind and what Elias Veturius actually means to the pride of Gen Aquilla. How Helene must live in a world she hasn't chose and how she, once before, made it just fine.<br/>(situated at the end of Book I)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're going to be a witness to change

**Author's Note:**

> There's Helene reacting to rape threats ahead, so proceed carefully.

The moment Elias and the girl disappear from her eyes, Helene’s hands start shaking as she makes sure everything is put into place. Her best friend, the man she loves – gone, and she not following him. She drops into a chair, as ungraceful as she never is, fingers passing through her hair. Here she is, stuck serving an Emperor she wants as far away from her as possible, bound to his wills through her deepest heart’s wish. She chances another look to the wall now covered, her mind screaming she might still have the chance to catch up with him, but she steels herself in the place, and waits for someone to find her, eventually.

She knows his room better than she knows hers, a place where they would always end up at the end of the day in their younger days, before hungry eyes started following her, before rude howls would mark Elias’ slightest motion in her direction. And here she is, again in this place, with no one to make it seem as special as it once has been, a feral pack of wolves waiting at the door to eat her up alive, to drown her in this world she doesn’t want to be in anymore. She can only replay the images from the first Trial over and over in her mind, the lecherous voice of Marcus sticking to her mind like a curse, her skin prickling remembering the kiss he forced out of her.

She remembers the crunching of his bones when he was punched, and she grasps her weapons tighter in her hand, knowing that now she is alone. The Augurs done their job, Elias is gone and a position waiting for her, the Emperor’s hatred and lust hanging around her throat, ready to choke her with his simple presence. And what she hates the most at him is that he understands; he understands the dark place inside her, her twisted wishes. Marcus never kid himself, Helene Aquilla could actually kill him in his sleep if she only desired, so he never underestimates her. He takes their battles seriously, dealing a blow with the intent to kill, and everything he does around her is carefully thought up before, drawing as much anger as possible.

And now she’s stuck here with him for who knows how long, her fiercest enemy and the one she fears the most for the simple reason that a simple word from him can unravel her, can make her drop her weapons. She bites her lips until it draws blood, until she can only taste the iron and not the bitter disappointment she is to herself.

She looks at her hands, those that carried out so many blindly followed orders, and she silently thanks this body of hers for doing so much for her, for moving on even when her mind screamed _no and no_ over and over again. She’s standing here thanks to it, she saved her best friend thanks to it… And everything happened because of who she is. So she erases all of Elias’ accusations from her mind and forces herself to move, to not sit still, to not think of everything she lost.

She will own being a Blood Shriek, just like she owned being a Mask. This is her determination, the force moving her forward, the only freedom she knows.

_******* _

Marcus doesn’t look for her for a while. The news must reach the whole realm, the Blackcliff preparing to greet an Emperor properly. She doesn’t have to do any of her old duties anymore and her steps don’t move her towards similar spaces in which she trained and bleed and sweated and hoped in for so many years of her life.

She sits in front of the mirror, working on tying her braids even as she doesn’t have any plan of going out. Her mind wanders, following the unspoken promise she made to Elias, not to forget what they were together. Best friends, but not exactly only that. Not true lovers either, but Helene leaves it as that and soaks into the ache she feels at his absence. It’s almost like she doesn’t have a limb, like a part at her core has been utterly destroyed.

Who protects Elias’ back now? Who is there to make sure he doesn’t get into stupid fights?

 _Not you_ , a treacherous voice whispers back answers at her, and Helene starts humming lowly as she moves to another side of her head, secretly hoping her healing works on her and on souls as well. She doesn’t feel any better, and she shudders when she looks out the window and the weather is just the same as during the Trial of Strength. She stares and stares, but she’s not thinking of her fallen comrades, because they followed orders as well, but rather she’s back to the day when she was six and so scared that faking bravery was the only thing she knew how to do.

_******* _

Helene doesn’t know why she chose him, out of all those children around her. She remembers looking the same as them all, her hair cut as well, so short that she couldn’t even feel it anymore. He is the only one not shaking, not crying out for aid from the first second after the door locked after them, and maybe that’s why she likes him, that’s why she speaks up, that’s why she accepts the food he shares with her so willingly, so unsuspicious of him. Because he was thinking the same thing as her _– they can’t keep us here for long, we’ve been chosen because we’re needed._

Maybe she has been a little bit angry when he saw him whimper against the tattoo pressed at his neck, while she faced everything fiercely tight-lipped and with the grace her family imposed to her in her previous training, but then it is too late, because afterwards, finding comfort in both making it out alive from their first challenge, he seeks her hand and she curls her fingers around his with such desperate need that he feels the fear oozing out of her.

“Helene Aquilla.” Her head snaps to look at him, shorter than her and with a gaze that steadies her in her place. “We’re making it out of here alive, in such glory that they’ll want to kneel in front of us and doubt if we allow it.”

His voice is pleasant, reminding her of a story-teller, and his promise more fitted into a fairytale than at Blackcliff, but she nods, willing herself to believe it, willing herself to make sure that this is exactly how they’ll go down in history. That was the moment when Helene decides that if she is to blindly follow someone, it’ll be him, with his smile blazing like the sun and his face so hopeful that she wants to weep.

So they stick together. Elias helps her cut her hair evenly when it’s long enough, to make it look presentable, and he’s also the one that teaches her how to twist her locks and pin them, a skill he says he learned from his life before. She smiles into her hair, not quite turning for him to see it, but he can sense it in her voice when she praises him and it’s its own kind of personal, precious praise as well.

When they’re eleven and find themselves thrown out into the wilderness, they find each other as quick as Marcus and Zack do, Helene and Elias some kind of soul mates, some kind of brothers by choice, and maybe for it, their bond even stronger. There’s no hesitance or shame as they fall into each other’s arms, stark naked and made-up weapons in their hands.

Elias is crying, because he’s seen some dead already, both at the hand of men and fierceness of beasts and his eyes are frantically searching her body for wounds. Besides some scrapes at her knees and a cut at her elbow, she’s good, though she’s not sure she wants to look at him just yet, for underestimating her as well, for not trusting her with being strong enough to find her way back to him, no matter how many times. But she still pushes at his shoulders, willing him to get lower, his body growing and growing, already taller than hers, her hands wiping away the tears, a smile on her face.

“We’re here… we’re here.”

They make camp early that day, feasting on a rabbit boiled with some weeds Elias picked up, and when they go to sleep that night, his body curls around her, his head resting at her belly, his fingers painfully digging into her skin, like he tries to make sure she’s real.

Those four years aren’t easy, but they’re the best they get out of the whole training at Blackcliff Military Academy. They don’t work by a schedule and the world is ready to offer them whatever they are skilled enough to take. They can simply avoid any connection with the outer world, and for many painfully sweet months, their lives consist only of each other, a fire between them and a shared bed.

And then they’re back and probably that’s why so many want to run after – because they know, now, how freedom tastes like. Maybe that’s why so many want to run before – because they want those four years more than anything else, as fast as possible.

She gets her first real whipping the first week she is back, because she punches one of the boys who dared snaking a hand around her waist, her curves now obvious, her body grown into one of a woman's. She felt his gaze on her all week, and now, he finally acted upon his… lesser instincts. He falls over a table, breaking it and all the bowls sprawled on it, and she then straddles him, punching his face over and over, until her knuckles are bleeding and all she can think of is _See, do you like it?_ over and over again, like a mantra that might keep it from happening again.

Elias is the one finally getting her off the man and she sternly refuses to look at him. There’s a comment from the sides, **bitch** , casually thrown before the Commandant walks in, and because she’s the only still conscious, she’s the one dragged outside. She doesn’t say anything while the pain comes cascading over her, again and again, and she desperately hangs to her consciousness.

When the Commandant stops, Helene straightens her back, even if she’d rather curl in pain, even if she’s naked from waist up, and no one in the yard dares to cheer or say anything. She stays like that until the Commandant leaves, until the men are done glaring at her chest, ogling at her like she’s a show. She despises them all, and she wants to show them that she can face them all, even beaten up and bloodied.

She loses her footing when Elias approaches, as she tries to make her way to her room, and he gently drops his cape around her, careful to not let it touch the wound. She leans for a second in his touch, his hand warm at her shoulder, and then he’s flustered and he stares at his hand, red with her own blood.

“Damn it, Helene, you can’t just walk around like that, you weren’t even supposed to get this whi-“

He stops, seeing as she stubbornly pushes forward through the hallways. He falls into pace at her side, nerves on edge to catch her if she falls. But she doesn’t, of course she doesn’t, but she neither returns his cape once in front of her room. She tightens it closer to her body, her brows furrowing the only sign of pain that crosses her face. And then –

“I’m not their comrade anymore, I’m just a woman.”

It surprises even her how calm she sounds, like she has expected it. She looks Elias in the eyes, and she doesn’t like to think that the only one who will probably never see her as such is exactly the one she starts to want to.

“You’re one of the best warriors I’ve ever seen.”

He boasts it, with a pride similar to an older brother’s or a father’s, and she nods once before turning around and going into her room. The physician is sent in a half an hour later and she can make out his body behind him, before Elias leaves again. She sits, silently, as the physician treats her wounds, and then she falls asleep, too tired to care.

The next morning they’re all called to the courtyard and her body jerks when she sees Elias ready to get whipped. Her eyes scan the mass around her, and yes, she can notice the absence of the man she hurt, but also that of the man who called her a bitch in the dead silence that followed her punches. She can’t tear her eyes away from Elias’ back, turning redder and redder with every snap, and she’d like to scream that this is madness and unfairness, but it won’t get her anywhere. So she looks, making herself memorize this, because this is how her best friend thinks she is to be consoled, because he chose the chance of seeing herself smile or even angry as a storm, rather than having her face this new situation by her own. She licks her lips, and she moves even before the Commandant leaves, dropping next to him.

And he dares _grinning_ at her.

“Now we match.”

She punches his shoulder and he hisses in response, though his smile doesn’t falter. That’s what he sees as fair, that’s his way of saying _if you’re suffering, they’ll end up in doubled pain._ She grins back, slinging his arm around her shoulder and helping him to his room.

She thinks that this will be their thing, choosing each other, being the most important person for each other. The option of betrayal isn’t even thought of, and yet… he ends up doing exactly that. Betraying her, giving her up. Again. For someone that doesn’t know that his lips tremble when he smiles, that doesn’t know that his toes curl when he sleeps or that his cheek moves almost unnoticeable when he lies. For fuck’s sake, they pulled each other’s teeth out! And yet, he gives her away.

Helene kids herself that it is because he thinks she’s strong enough to face everything on her own, but if there’s someone who knows how deep and raw her fears are, then that someone is Elias. And he doesn’t have eyes for her, for how she mutely begs, _no no no._

**_***_ **

She didn’t conquer the Trial of Courage. She knows it, because she feared heights afterwards too, even if her vow felt like plunging into the unknown from thousands of feet up in the sky. She knows that the only way in which she can defeat her fear is if she faces it; she’s dropped from enough cliffs, desperate and eyes shut tight hoping she’d wake up from a nightmare and continuing to hope so until she felt nothing when she leapt into thin air, to know that it won’t end if she doesn’t want it to. She knows that only continuing to live after such an experience will calm down her nerves, feeling, as she prepares her gear, the hand of Elias rubbing her back, begging her to breathe deeply, so her panic attack can fade.

She feels the same kind of calmness wash over her as she secures her belt, as she feels the familiar weight of her favorite dagger in her hand. She’s dressed lightly, clothes especially made for stealth and sneaking around, and with so many things going on at the same time, the Blackcliff is all over the place, guard posts left open. She doesn’t need this chance anyway; she knows these hallways as well as the stone’s shadows and she reaches the Commandant’s room in a minute. Now that there’s someone higher on the social ladder, she had to give up her room. Helene thinks for a second that not one upgrade was offered to the Blood Shriek, to her, the one who swung an axe towards her best friend’s friend, but she doesn’t stop too much to think of this.

There are no guards posted in front of the room, just at the building, and Helene wants to snort because her own people should know better what they are taught to do as a Mask.

Marcus wakes up to the cold touch of steel at his neck and his eyes zoom in Helene’s face. She’s sweating, though the air in the room is cold, and her eyes are fixed on his face, so focused that he feels the force of her gaze rattling his bones.

“One move and you’re dead.”

Her warning means nothing, he knows it better than anyone, blood trailing from the superficial wound she’s already left on his neck. She’s straddling him and for a sick second, she feels dizzy with the idea that he might just somehow use brute force to rape her and finish her forever. Then her hold tightens around the handle of her dagger, and she breathes.

“I’m your Blood Shriek. I will do whatever you ask me to do, because I swore it.” Her eyes narrow on his face, aware that a vow means nothing to someone like him and everything to someone like her. “But I am not your bitch or your toy. I am a warrior and –“  she stops, her dagger slipping, Marcus hissing. “The likes like you are nothing but scum, no matter how nicely titled you come.”

Her back straightens, her eyes cold on Marcus. She draws her dagger too fast for him to grab at it before she thrusts it into his thigh.

The Emperor screams, eyes shut. He feels the touch of steel against his lips, just passing by, a silent warning to keep him away and silent if he wants to keep his tongue. The guards storm in just two seconds later, but Helene Aquilla is nowhere to be found. When Marcus is asked who attacked him, he keeps silent, insists he’s been asleep and couldn’t notice the person’s face when he finally woke up. Admitting to her attack means admitting to Blackcliff having weaknesses, means admitting to the Emperor already having someone influencing him, already mingling in his business.

Helene doesn’t reach her room; instead she crouches into a bush near to the building hosting her and throws up. Her heart thumps into her head, giving her a migraine, but she smiles in a wicked sort of way, because she walked into the lion’s open mouth and she came back, with a fang as well. She still is weak for a while, even as she sits on her bed, and although she has probably worse things to fear from the Emperor, now free to bring upon her whatever revenge he wants, with little to no explication given, Helene is pleased with herself.

She is Aquilla, second in the Trials created by the Augurs, Blood Shriek, and she can’t be humiliated or thrown away without any real consequences. And she is Helene, so whatever else it is in store, she can do it. She _will_ do it.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, but let me tell you this: AN EMBER IN THE ASHES UTTERLY DESTROYED ME. Mainly because I adore Helene more than anything in this world, and because she doesn't get what she wants. I swear, not us, the readers, and not any of the characters truly deserve someone as Helene Aquilla. That doesn't stop me from madly rooting for Elias/Helene... JUST HAPPEN ALREADY. *sobs in a corner*  
> ((friendly reminder that Elias called Helene a goddess, wanted to kiss her at least 3 times during the book and defends her in front of his grandparent and protects her from a distance even when they're not speaking to each other... if this is not true love, please don't talk to me))
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://teavious.tumblr.com/)!


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